Bullying culture persists at Department for Communities and Local Government

The problem of staff bullying and discrimination has yet to be fully tackled in the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), a committee of MPs has warned.

The Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee said it was concerned by “the small, but persistent and significant, incidence of bullying, harassment and discrimination” within the department.

Its report said that although senior managers had identified and were tackling the problems, concerns remained about “the persistence of poor management culture” at DCLG.

The committee said it doubted whether senior management was thinking seriously about whether the steps it was taking were actually working.

“Rather, the approach seems to be to carry on and hope for improvements in the future,” the MPs said.

The Whitehall department’s most recent capability review, published in December 2008, also identified “barriers to effective feedback and challenge in the department, particularly at board level”, with only 27% of employees feeling that it was safe to raise difficult issues.

In a statement, DCLG said: “We are committed to building on the progress of the past three years, by further improving our performance in leadership, strategy and delivery.”